


squares kept empty

by Ladybug_21



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: F/M, Found Family, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:55:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27737224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladybug_21/pseuds/Ladybug_21
Summary: At Beth's wedding, the people who aren't there are just as important as the people who are.
Relationships: Beth Harmon & Alma Wheatley, Beth Harmon & Jolene, Beth Harmon & William Shaibel, Beth Harmon/Benny Watts, Harry Beltik/Annette Packer
Comments: 22
Kudos: 227





	squares kept empty

**Author's Note:**

> I just finished this show, and I screamed for like half an hour straight, and I all-caps texted the friends who had been telling me to watch it, and then I had to write this because GAH, my heart and literally every single character in this entire story. 😍 I own no rights to _The Queen's Gambit_.

Benny wanted to hold the wedding in New York, but Beth insisted on Kentucky, instead. "You're not even _from_ New York," she reminds him; and, since her identity is too strong to dislodge from Lexington, Benny adjourns this round and drives down with Wexler and Levertov in tow, his only suit crumpled into a duffel bag in the trunk just in case. But as soon as Benny arrives, he realizes why this is home for Beth, why it could be a home for him, as well. He walks into the house that Beth so painstakingly wrested from Allston Wheatley's hands and remade in her own image, and there are all of their friends—Matt and Mike, Harry Beltik, Townes, and of course Beth.

"Better than that depressing empty basement you've got there in the city, huh?" she teases him, her lips brushing his as his arms circle her waist. Rather than admit that she's got him in check, Benny kisses her, and that shuts Beth up quite readily.

Planning the wedding is surprisingly easy, mostly because all of their friends are so excited to do it for them. Matt and Mike harness their enthusiasm and throw it into decorating an outdoor pavilion with streamers and bouquets. Harry orders a special cake from the supermarket where he'll graciously bow out as manager when he gets his engineering degree next spring; Annette, with whom he's been going steady for a year now, helps him choose designs between rounds of chess (because, med school or no, Annette's decided it's time she get back into the game, and Harry is all too willing of a coach). Jolene, just returning from her second year at law school, appears early the day of in her flashy car with a cigarette drooping between two fingers, and smirks at the wedding cake toppers—not a bride and a groom, but a black king and a white queen.

"What's that for?" she asks Mike, as he places a saucer on a chair; and when he tells her, Jolene frowns thoughtfully and says, "Save this chair, too, okay?"

It's a perfect early summer day, not yet too heavy with humidity but vivid with golden sunshine. Townes—attending in a personal rather than a professional capacity—is ready with a camera and a fresh roll of film when Beth arrives in a chic white dress, her red hair crimped and her eyeliner flared perfectly.

"You look like a million bucks," he tells her, snapping a photo and then kissing her on the cheek; Beth throws her arms around him as eagerly as she had one chilly winter evening in Moscow. "Congratulations, Harmon."

And as Matt hits the button on the stereo and a wedding march begins to play, Beth walks slowly down the makeshift aisle of folding chairs on the lawn, smiling far too broadly at her friends' faces as they turn towards her.

Beth has always loved the possibilities of a chessboard right before the game begins, when her opponent's finger is hovering over the orderly rows of pieces, scanning for the right one to touch and then move. It's the fact that there is order, and that order is about to be spun into a chaos that is governed by rules that make it possible to regulate the chaos, to anticipate the hows even if not the whats or the whens. She knows how things start (she's read the whole book that Jolene stole and returned, she knows every opening imaginable), and she knows how things will end (with her opponent tipping his king in defeat). It's the dance across those central squares that enthralls her, anticipating where the pieces move—and anticipating where they will not.

Here, there's Townes gesturing her down the aisle. At the end of the aisle is Benny, shooting her a lopsided smile in his suit, which someone (probably Harry) has managed to iron wrinkle-free, the outlined handle of his knife only just visible against the fabric of his jacket. And in between are the people who have made Beth's life what it is, all of the smiling faces, as familiar and welcoming as the pieces of the game that regulates her life.

But there, between Matt and Mike, is an empty seat; and when Beth sees the tea cup sitting there on it, she gasps. Harry must have told them that Beth never could bear to wash the lipstick mark off of it, that she had stored it in Alma's closet with all of her clothes, just to keep a tiny piece of her mother alive. The watch that Alma gave her ticks from her wrist, its face repaired with some of Beth's winnings from Moscow, and she nods gratefully to Matt and Mike, for saving Alma one final seat at the most important match of Beth's life.

It doesn't surprise her, then, to see that there's a seat left open next to Jolene, too—Jolene, who shoots a wink at her old friend (her only family) and tilts a nod at the pair of chalkboard erasers left on that chair. And Beth feels tears well in her eyes as she realizes that they're still here; not only her beloved mother whose laughing face Beth can still remember at a piano in Mexico City; but also the father she never had, who always, always saved her a chair down in the basement where he had never stopped believing in his miraculous little girl. The sacrificed pieces leave the board, but they never truly disappear from the game, after all.

Beth closes then lifts her eyes for a moment. The sky beams down a brilliant periwinkle, too intense for her to visualize a chessboard, but Beth doesn't need to. She lowers her eyes, and there's Benny, who takes her hand not with the firm handshake of an adversary, but as a partner. And Beth smiles at him as they turn as one to face together a new life beyond the edge of the board.


End file.
